I leaned my cheek upon my hand and looked upon the landscape. Its quiet
beauty soothed me. The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining field
came cheerily to my ear. I seemed to respire hope and comfort with the
free air that whispered through the leaves and played lightly with my
hair, and dried the tears upon my cheek. A lark, rising from the field
before me, and leaving, as it were, a stream of song behind him as he
rose, lifted my fancy with him. He hovered in the air just above the
place where the towers of Warwick Castle marked the horizon; and seemed
as if fluttering with delight at his own melody. "Surely," thought I,
"if there were such a thing as transmigration of souls, this might be
taken for some poet, let loose from earth, but still revelling in song,
and carolling about fair fields and lordly towns."
At this moment the long forgotten feeling of poetry rose within me. A
Thought sprung at once into my mind: "I will become an author," said I.
"I have hitherto indulged in poetry as a pleasure, and it has brought
me nothing but pain. Let me try what it will do, when I cultivate it
with devotion as a pursuit."
The resolution, thus suddenly aroused within me, heaved a load from off
my heart. I felt a confidence in it from the very place where it was
formed. It seemed as though my mother's spirit whispered it to me from
her grave. "I will henceforth," said I, "endeavor to be all that she
fondly imagined me. I will endeavor to act as if she were witness of my
actions. I will endeavor to acquit myself in such manner, that when I
revisit her grave there may, at least, be no compunctious bitterness in
my tears."
I bowed down and kissed the turf in solemn attestation of my vow. I
plucked some primroses that were growing there and laid them next my
heart. I left the church-yard with my spirits once more lifted up, and
set out a third time for London, in the character of an author.
* * * * *
Here my companion made a pause, and I waited in anxious suspense;
hoping to have a whole volume of literary life unfolded to me. He
seemed, however, to have sunk into a fit of pensive musing; and when
after some time I gently roused him by a question or two as to his
literary career. "No," said he smiling, "over that part of my story I
wish to leave a cloud. Let the mysteries of the craft rest sacred for
me. Let those who have never adventured into the republic of letters,
still look upon it as a fairy land.
